Knowing the World 95relation between human beings and the world shows us
that this naive standpoint must be abandoned. If the naive
standpoint gave us something that could be recognized as
truth, then we would not feel this urge.
Yet we do not arrive at something which could be seen
as truth merely by abandoning the naive standpoint while
at the same time—without noticing it—retaining the style
of thought that it requires. We fall into this kind of error
when we think that we experience only mental pictures—
that though we believe we are dealing with realities, we
are in fact conscious only of our mental pictures of reali-
ties—and therefore suppose true realities to lie beyond
the scope of our consciousness, as “things-in-them-
selves,” of which we know nothing directly, and which
somehow approach and influence us, with the result that
a world of mental pictures comes to life within us. Those
who think in this way only add another world, in thought,
to the world lying before them; but with regard to this
world they really have to begin at the beginning again.
For they do not think about theunknown “thing-in-itself”
any differently, as far as its relationship to the individual
human being is concerned, than about the known thing of
the naive view of reality.
We avoid the confusion we fall into through critical re-
flection about this view only when we notice that there is
somethingwithinwhat we can experience through per-
ception in ourselves and outside in the world—something
that cannot fall prey to the problems that arise when a
mental picture interposes itself between the process and
the observing human being.This something is thinking. In